Pain saturated my dreams. When I woke up the next morning, lying there stiff in our old bed, I realized I really bungled up my ankle when I jumped off the balcony. Looking back, it was a stupid move, leaping away like I was in an action movie. Granted, I was trying to escape a drug lord’s henchman, so desperate times called for desperate measures.
After Javier blackmailed me into agreeing to help him, I went straight to the room and didn’t come out even when he knocked on the door and told me dinner was ready, like we were roommates or some shit. I was this close to opening the door and breaking his perfect teeth, but it seemed the angrier I acted toward him, the more he liked it. He was delusional enough to equate hatred with passion and I’d seen the way he’d been appraising me, like some cocky player who assumes every woman is in love with him.
The thing was, I had been in love with him once. I’d been more than in love with him – it bordered on something between love and obsession, between Romeo and Juliet teenage dramatics and something real. But, it never was real. Over the years, I had convinced myself of that. I had to. It was the only way I could make sense of what he had done and what I needed to do to get over it. What Javier and I shared was a deadly cocktail of intense hormones and lies. True love doesn’t have a sick desperation to it, an undercurrent of doom. People who burn that brightly still get burnt in the end and I’m sure if it hadn’t been for him cheating on me, it would have ended some other way. The whole relationship had been based on deceit and it was only a matter of time before it would have caught up with me.
Now, of course, Javier knew the lie. I hoped it ripped his heart out just a little bit when he found out that all that time Eden White wasn’t who he thought she was. Probably not, though. He was different now, bolder and more exaggerated, all of his flaws magnified and his good side gone. He wouldn’t know the meaning of sentiment, though I had a feeling that it at least ate at his sense of pride, something he had too much of anyway.
I knew I shouldn’t have been lying there thinking about him and the past and the ways things had changed. Giving him all that thought was giving him too much credit. It was a hard thing not to do when you were stuck in his house, the house you shared together. It gave a sense of comfort and familiarity that was all an illusion. If this was six years ago, I could figure out what to do next and how to get out of it. I could escape once again and go find Camden. I would find a way to keep him safe, even if it meant having to watch him start a new life with his family.
The very thought of him and Sophia brought a heavy knot into my stomach. That was another thing I was trying to keep on the back burner, the fact that he was with his family. It shouldn’t have made me feel so … desolate … but it did. And it was partially my fault. I mean, I know I did the right thing, maybe the first right thing I ever did in my life. And yet, it didn’t feel right or good. It only made me feel a bit resigned that we’d even gotten in that position in the first place. If I could go back in time and change things, I would have split with Camden as soon as we left Vegas. I would have sent him up to Gualala on his own and gotten out of there before I fell in love with him. And, since we’re talking about a fictional time machine here, I would have saved Uncle Jim in the process.
The knot in my gut started to twist and bleed, a whole new, less-selfish set of feelings cutting through. Uncle Jim, whose face I still saw in my sleep, the man who’d been so much to me yet was willing to sell me out for a bit of cash. I still didn’t know how to deal with his death, feeling so much anger for what he tried to do to and so much fucking shame that he died on account of me.